Long May It Wave - Canadian Flag Above Florida Mobile Home

A Canadian couple retires, moves to Florida and, one day, gets a little Canadian flag as a Christmas present from their daughter.

The couple proudly flies the 12-inch-by-22-inch flag over their mobile home, only to be told by the mobile-home-park manager that only American flags are welcome there.

''It's very simple. This is the United States. I feel American flags should be flown here - not Canadian flags,'' the manager was quoted in one wire-service report as saying.

The name of the mobile-home park?

Drumroll please.

Japanese Garden.

This story could be right out of a comedy routine; it's so silly. And yet it actually happened in Clearwater.

Worse, the Toronto couple says they were told by a neighbor that they were breaking the law by flying a flag other than Old Glory. And the couple, Jim and Bev Harris, say the manager of the mobile-home park also told them that the only way to fly the Canadian flag was to put a U.S. flag on top of it.

Of course, there is no such requirement in any law.

In the United States, where the Founding Fathers had the wisdom to protect freedom of speech and of religion in the First Amendment to the Constitution, you would think that there would be a better understanding of people's rights.

In a country in which most of us can trace our family tree's roots to some other land as recently as three generations ago, you would think that Americans, of all people, would feel comfortable with other cultures.

It's amazing that some people would get so riled up over the display of a foreign flag on U.S. soil, particularly when the mobile-home park is named Japanese Garden. And, according to news reports, about one-fifth of the residents at Japanese Garden are Canadians.

It's particularly odd that people would be concerned about the flying of a flag from a country that has a long, friendly history with the United States.

Odd, indeed. When I traveled to Europe in the mid-1980s, I saw a few American flags - and flags from other countries - displayed in a shopping area of Paris and in at least one residential neighborhood near Madrid. It was heartening to see the American flag. It made me feel welcome.

So what's so wrong with making visitors to this country feel welcome?

And what do we make of all the folks who display the Confederate flag as if it were the American flag?

That flag doesn't even represent a country - it represents divisiveness and old wounds and the immoral ''right'' to own slaves under the guise of ''states' rights.'' Despite my dislike of the Confederate flag, though, people certainly have a right to fly that flag over their own home or drape it in the back of their pickup truck.

They have as much right to put up that flag as anyone living in this free country has a right to criticize their doing so.

And what about those artsy flags with pineapples on them or flags depicting the colors of one university sports team or another? Are the people who use those artsy flags for decoration by their front door being unpatriotic? Or is it OK only for Americans to fly such flags?

Sure, it would have been nice if, in the spirit of American-Canadian friendship, both the U.S. flag and the Canadian flag had gone up over the Harris' mobile home.

It would have been nicer, still, if the Harrises had been offered a little hospitality by their ''patriotic'' neighbors - instead of being made to feel as if they were lawbreakers in the land of the free.